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Welcome to Heresy 203, the latest version of the quirky thread where we take an in-depth look at the story and in particular what GRRM has referred to as the real conflict, not the Game of Thrones, but the apparent threat which lies in the North, in those magical Otherlands beyond the Wall. The thread is called Heresy because we miserable heretics were the first to challenge the orthodoxy that the Wall is the last best hope of mankind; to question whether the three-fingered tree-huggers really are kindly elves and question too whether the Starks might have a dark secret in their past, which we’re beginning to suspect may be gaunt, with characteristic long Stark face and very very cold.

We don’t all agree on this, or anything else for that matter, but we can safely claim to have been around for a while now and discussed an awful lot of stuff over the years since the threads started in 2011. Some of it has been overtaken by events and some of it seemingly confirmed by the earlier stages of mummers’ version before it firmly moved into weird fan-fiction.

So dig in, enjoy yourself and if it comes to a fight just remember the local house rules; stick to the text, have respect for the ideas of others and above all conduct the debate with great good humour.

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We also have Rhaegar say tpwwp has a "Song of ice and fire". If tpwwp is the same as aa, it doesn't necessarily mean he is of ice and fire, it could be a song about a man of fire fighting an enemy of ice. But I tend to take it to mean tpwwp is of both.

We also have "The pact of ice and fire" promising the Starks a Targaryan princess, which to me seems like it will later suggest "what if". Starks and Targaryan are special bloodlines and there is a special role from someone descended from both families.

Continuing from the previous discussion...

I think the song of ice and fire is the story itself and the song is still unfolding. The characters are instruments in the song and the song is not written or finished until the end of the story. The bards can't tell the story until it's done. They can only make up songs about parts of the story. So all the characters are included in the song; the song belongs to all of them not just the PwP.

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And once again time for a quick look at the full text of GRRM's 1993 letter to his agent, Ralph Vicinanza:

October 1993

Dear Ralph,

Here are the first thirteen chapters (170 pages) of the high fantasy novel I promised you, which I'm calling A Game of Thrones. When completed, this will be the first volume in what I see as an epic trilogy with the overall title, A Song of Ice and Fire.

As you know, I don't outline my novels. I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it. I do, however, have some strong notions as to the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle [sic] characters in the drama.

Roughly speaking, there are three major conflicts set in motion in the chapters enclosed. These will form the major plot threads of the trilogy, intertwining with each other in what should be a complex but exciting (I hope) narrative tapestry. Each of the conflicts presents a major threat to the peace of my imaginary realm, the Seven Kingdoms, and to the lives of the principal characters.

The first threat grows from the enmity between the great houses of Lannister and Stark as it plays out in a cycle of plot, counterplot, ambition, murder, and revenge, with the iron throne of the Seven Kingdoms as the ultimate prize. This will form the backbone of the first volume of the trilogy, A Game of Thrones.

While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarians hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume, A Dance with Dragons.

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and and endless night is the Wall, and a handful of men in black called the Night's Watch. Their story will be the heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. The final battle will also draw together characters and plot threads left from the first two books and resolve all in one huge climax.

The thirteen chapters on hand should give you a notion as to my narrative strategy. All three books will feature a complex mosaic of intercutting points-of-view among various of my large and diverse cast of players. The cast will not always remains the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic viewpoint characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.

Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. All of them are introduced at some length in the chapters you have to hand.

This is going to be (I hope) quite an epic. Epic in its scale, epic in its action, and epic in its length. I see all three volumes as big books, running about 700 to 800 manuscript pages, so things are just barely getting underway in the thirteen chapters I've sent you.

I have quite a clear notion of how the story is going to unfold in the first volume, A Game of Thrones. Things will get a lot worse for the poor Starks before they get better, I'm afraid. Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn Tully are both doomed, and will perish at the hands of their enemies. Ned will discover what happened to his friend Jon Arryn, but before he can act on his knowledge, King Robert will have an unfortunate accident, and the throne will pass to his sullen and brutal son Joffrey, still a minor. Joffrey will not be sympathetic and Ned will be accused of treason, but before he is taken he will help his wife and his daughter escape back to Winterfell.

Each of the contending families will learn it has a member of dubious loyalty in its midst. Sansa Stark, wed to Joffrey Baratheon, will bear him a son, the heir to the throne, and when the crunch comes she will choose her husband and child over her parents and siblings, a choice she will later bitterly rue. Tyrion Lannister, meanwhile, befriend both Sansa and her sister Arya, while growing more and more disenchanted with his own family.

Young Bran will come out of his coma, after a strange prophetic dream, only to discover that he will never walk again. He will turn to magic, at first in the hope of restoring his legs, but later for its own sake. When his father Eddard Stark is executed, Bran will see the shape of doom descending on all of them, but nothing he can say will stop his brother Robb from calling the banners in rebellion. All the north will be inflamed by war. Robb will win several splendid victories, and maim Joffrey Baratheon on the battlefield, but in the end he will not be able to stand against Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and their allies. Robb Stark will die in battle, and Tyrion Lannister will besiege and burn Winterfell.

Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night's Watch. When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Hounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night's Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon's anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving... until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night's Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon's true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.

Abandoned by the Night's Watch, Catelyn and her children will find their only hope of safety lies even further north, beyond the Wall, where they fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, and get a dreadful glimpse of the inhuman others as they attack the wildling encampment. Bran's magic, Arya's sword Needle, and the savagery of their direwolves will help them survive, but their mother Catelyn will die at the hands of the others.

Over across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen will discover that her new husband, the Dothraki Khal Drogo, has little interest in invading the Seven Kingdoms, much to her brother's frustration. When Viserys presses his claims past the point of tact or wisdom, Khal Drogo will finally grow annoyed and kill him out of hand, eliminating the Targaryen pretender and leaving Daenerys as the last of her line. Daenerys will bide her time, but she will not forget. When the moment is right, she will kill her husband to avenge her brother, and then flee with a trusted friend into the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak. There, hunted by Dothraki bloodriders [?] of her life, she stumbles on a cache of dragon's eggs [?] of a young dragon will give Daenerys the power to bend the Dothraki to her will. Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.

Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he's at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Snow.

[7 Lines Redacted]

But that's the second book...

I hope you'll find some editors who are as excited about all of this as I am. Feel free to share this letter with anyone who wants to know how the story will go.

All best,

George R.R. Martin

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.I think the song of ice and fire is the story itself and the song is still unfolding. The characters are instruments in the song and the song is not written or finished until the end of the story. The singers can't tell the story until it's done. So all the characters are included in the song; the song belongs to all of them not just the PwP.

This is why I've just re-posted the synopsis; not to argue over the details, especially given that so many of them never happened but to look at the story GRRM was setting out to write; this is the story of the children of Winterfell, plus Tyrion and Danaerys.

Or rather what its not about. Its not Lord of the Rings, its not about Azor Ahai and the return of the king, but rather its an anti-Lord of the Rings. GRRM has made it pretty clear over the years that while he [obviously] admires the Lord of the Rings, he's writing a very different book [cf. Aragorn and Orc children] and this one isn't about good and evil, rather there's good and evil in everyone. While there's a simplistic view out there that Melisandre has explained to readers that its a conflict between light and darkness in which Jon Snow will eventually be recognised as Azor Ahai [on account of R+L=J] and will therefore save the day by defeating the darkness from the north - that isn't the story in the synopsis and we miserable heretics would argue that it isn't the story so far either; the Red lot promise [and deliver] a pretty horrific regime in the name of salvation; the three-fingered-tree-huggers don't look like kindly elves and GRRM has told us that there's more to the blue-eyed lot than at first appears. And all through it, this isn't just about Jon Snow and Danaerys the Dragonlord; its about the other children of Winterfell, and the Lannisters and perhaps others as well

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This is why I've just re-posted the synopsis; not to argue over the details, especially given that so many of them never happened but to look at the story GRRM was setting out to write; this is the story of the children of Winterfell, plus Tyrion and Danaerys.

I appreciate the review of the letter from time to time for the overview. I tend to forget the letter and GRRM's original intentions. All the Stark kids have survived to DwD along with Tyrion and Dany. In the end, I'm only expecting Sansa, Aegon and Tyrion to survivie and I expect it will be Tyrion who will scour the Shire, write the histories and the song of ice and fire. Sansa will finally marry her dragon prince and this will be the joining of ice and fire bloodline, in the next generation. Aegon will do as the PwP is meant to do; bring peace, prosperity and justice to the realm. To that end, Dany will sacrifice herself and her dragons. LOL!

What happens between now and then will start to shape up in WoW and I expect Jon will be going down some very dark paths.

Quote

He dreamt he was back in Winterfell, limping past the stone kings on their thrones. Their grey granite eyes turned to follow him as he passed, and their grey granite fingers tightened on the hilts of the rusted swords upon their laps. You are no Stark, he could hear them mutter, in heavy granite voices. There is no place for you here. Go away. He walked deeper into the darkness. "Father?" he called. "Bran? Rickon?" No one answered. A chill wind was blowing on his neck. "Uncle?" he called. "Uncle Benjen? Father? Please, Father, help me." Up above he heard drums. They are feasting in the Great Hall, butI am not welcome there. I am no Stark, and this is not my place. His crutch slipped and he fell to his knees. The crypts were growing darker. A light has gone out somewhere. "Ygritte?" he whispered. "Forgive me. Please." But it was only direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark .

Jon's recurring crypt dream continues to develop.

The dream now includes Jon using a crutch and a direwolf with golden eyes. So the question becomes what does it mean that Jon is using a crutch. Is this a literal vision, considering that there is a direwolf in the picture spotted with blood and in ghastly shape? The direwolf is not Ghost, so potentially it's Summer or Grey Wind.

Considering that Jon is desperately denying that he is a Stark and using his bastardy as a crutch; I'm inclined to think the wolf in the picture is Bran/Summer. It's Bran who is told something about Jon by Ned's ghost; something that is more disturbing than the crow dreams.

I think we are coming up on the Vader-ish moment when Jon learns his identity. Bearing in mind that Jon wants to know the identity of his mother; he may be coming to the truth of it, since Lyanna's statue is in the crypts. The point where the crutch fails and he falls to his knees. This would be a horrendous revelation for Jon because it would mean that not only is he a bastard; he's a bastard born of incest. Considering that Jon thinks his father is Ned, this will be devastating and who knows what roads Jon will go down afterward. Given the story that Lyanna was raped, everything that Jon thought he knew about Ned will be a lie that can only give rise to beserker madness. Jon will be completely shattered.

Only the reader knows that Ned isn't Jon's father.

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Jon XII

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. "Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared.

The world dissolved into a red mist. Jon stabbed and slashed and cut. He hacked down Donal Noye and gutted Deaf Dick Follard. Qhorin Halfhand stumbled to his knees, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. "I am the Lord of Winterfell," Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder. He whirled …

… and woke with a raven pecking at his chest. "Snow," the bird cried. Jon swatted at it. The raven shrieked its displeasure and flapped up to a bedpost to glare down balefully at him through the predawn gloom.

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Wasn't the crutch included at the time he was hobbling around with one after getting shot by Ygritte?

Was it? I don't recall. I think I still see the dream elements incorporating a crutch and a direwolf as foreshadowing, or something impacting on his subconscious, relating to his identity.

It's also curious that Mormont's Raven wakes him and this appears in Jon's dream as a gnarled hand. For some reason I'm reminded of Hodor waiting in the shadows while Bran dreams as though Hodor and the Raven are observers in the dream.

Edited October 14, 2017 by LynnS

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To go back to something JNR said; I'm not expecting anyone in the story to come right out and tell Jon about his parentage. That information is more likely to come in bits and pieces through dreams and visions or various characters. I think it's even possible that Jon will make the discovery for himself. I don't think he will survive the stabbing and who knows what he will become afterwards. I do think Jon is the 3EC of Bran's dreams and that Jon, Bran and Sansa will become powerful forces. You might even consider them the Bloodraven's three heads.

With Bran there is a sense that his future experiences bleed back to his past existence through his dreams. I think we see that with Tree-Bran's encounter with Jon and Bran's dream of it in the crypts before the encounter with Jon takes place.

There is the sense that Bran always knew certain things would happen when he says that he always knew he would end up in the crypts of Winterfell. That implies that he will be Lord of Winterfell before Robb even meets his death. Similarly Jon tells Arya that he expects she will be found in the spring, frozen in the ice still clutching needle.

So if Jon does become a powerful force and the I suspect the 3EC; it's possible that his future experiences are also bleeding back in his dreams. Isn't this the nature of foreshadowing?

This is another dream of Jon's with oddities:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jon VI

"Drink this." Grenn held a cup to his lips. Jon drank. His head was full of wolves and eagles, the sound of his brothers' laughter. The faces above him began to blur and fade. They can't be dead. Theon would never do that. And Winterfell . . . grey granite, oak and iron, crows wheeling around the towers, steam rising off the hot pools in the godswood, the stone kings sitting on their thrones . . . how could Winterfell be gone?

When the dreams took him, he found himself back home once more, splashing in the hot pools beneath a huge white weirwood that had his father's face. Ygritte was with him, laughing at him, shedding her skins till she was naked as her name day, trying to kiss him, but he couldn't, not with his father watching. He was the blood of Winterfell, a man of the Night's Watch. I will not father a bastard, he told her. I will not. I will not. "You know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered, her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red.

The treatment of boiling the flesh in vats of hot water is the process that the Silent Sisters use for preparing a body after death. Ygritte was cremated so why do we get this vision with Ned watching? This would be how Lyanna's remains were treated overseen by Ned.

If Ygritte the Wildling is a stand-in for Lyanna with a touch wildness in her blood; then Jon represents his father in this dream. Further Jon doesn't want Ned to know about his liason with Ygritte and Lyanna/Ygritte is a willing participant. So rather than Ned being Jon's father; his father is someone who is associated with Ned or someone who flies under Ned's radar.

Speculation can run rampant at this point. LOL!

.

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I don't think that Rhaegar will mean anything to Jon. We need to remember that Jon's obsession is with his mother, Ok he thinks that Ned is his father and therefore doesn't need to wonder about him, but nevertheless, no matter the seed what will matter to Jon is Aemon's declaration that he is a son of Winterfell. The father who raised him was a Stark of Winterfell and the mother who bore him was a Stark of Winterfell. Against that, Rhaegar is of no importance, no matter what the fans think

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I don't think that Rhaegar will mean anything to Jon. We need to remember that Jon's obsession is with his mother, Ok he thinks that Ned is his father and therefore doesn't need to wonder about him, but nevertheless, no matter the seed what will matter to Jon is Aemon's declaration that he is a son of Winterfell. The father who raised him was a Stark of Winterfell and the mother who bore him was a Stark of Winterfell. Against that, Rhaegar is of no importance, no matter what the fans think

I agree. Not to Jon's story at any rate. I'm not even sure all the dragons will survive after Victarion shows up, never mind three dragons riders. If Moqorro/Victarion manage to get their hands on even one dragon; I can see them killing the other one to even up the odds.

Nothing and nobody is safe including dragons and direwolves.

Edited October 14, 2017 by LynnS

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The characters are instruments in the song and the song is not written or finished until the end of the story. The bards can't tell the story until it's done. They can only make up songs about parts of the story. So all the characters are included in the song; the song belongs to all of them not just the PwP.

Wisely said. The PtwP is just a character who was prophesied and who appears to be closely connected to the Targs and of interest to them because of the role he or she was destined to play (which certainly seems to involve "waking dragons" and may invove more). But there is no protagonist in these books. They are not about the PtwP, any more than they have been all along.

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

While there's a simplistic view out there that Melisandre has explained to readers that its a conflict between light and darkness in which Jon Snow will eventually be recognised as Azor Ahai [on account of R+L=J] and will therefore save the day by defeating the darkness from the north

Yes, this is a popular view, but a more accurate rendition of the above would be:

Quote

Melisandre herself has a simplistic notion that the world can be divided into dualistic concepts like black and white, good and evil, etc. As far as we know, as of her last page in canon she still believes Stannis is the champion of good against evil, and the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy as Azor Ahai come again. At no time does she, or anyone else, openly endorse Jon Snow as a candidate for this role, though it may be some characters have such ideas in their heads.

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Wisely said. The PtwP is just a character who was prophesied and who appears to be closely connected to the Targs and of interest to them because of the role he or she was destined to play (which certainly seems to involve "waking dragons" and may invove more). But there is no protagonist in these books. They are not about the PtwP, any more than they have been all along.

Yes, to respond both to this and Lynn's point, I think its worth emphasising the difference between ambition and reality.

The statement that there must be three heads of the dragon represents an ambition, but it aint necessarily going to work out that way as the book is written. What happens when one of the heads is cut off?

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Bearing in mind that Jon wants to know the identity of his mother; he may be coming to the truth of it, since Lyanna's statue is in the crypts. The point where the crutch fails and he falls to his knees. This would be a horrendous revelation for Jon because it would mean that not only is he a bastard; he's a bastard born of incest. Considering that Jon thinks his father is Ned, this will be devastating and who knows what roads Jon will go down afterward. Given the story that Lyanna was raped, everything that Jon thought he knew about Ned will be a lie that can only give rise to beserker madness. Jon will be completely shattered.

Well, assuming you're right and he only discovers Lyanna was his mother, thinking the above might depend on his command of the timeline of Robert's Rebellion.

Jon has a birthday and knows both it and his age. He also surely knows when Robert's Rebellion happened and that it lasted a year.

So this would mean Jon believes, confidently, that he was born around the time Robert's Rebellion ended. Ergo, he also believes he must have been conceived about nine months earlier, and therefore, he could only be the son of Ned if Ned had encountered his sister Lyanna and had sex with her some three months after the war began.

I think he'd be skeptical of this event having happened since it was never mentioned or documented anywhere. Lyanna isn't said to have disappeared, then turned up in Ned's company after multiple months, then disappeared again for multiple months, then finally found before she died. So in conclusion, I think Jon might surmise that if Lyanna is in fact his mother, Ned cannot be his father.

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The statement that there must be three heads of the dragon represents an ambition, but it aint necessarily going to work out that way as the book is written. What happens when one of the heads is cut off?

I'm not sure, but I've always been fond of the idea that Dany will be killed on the first page of chapter one of TWOW, and that Rhaegar (looking down from ASOIAF Heaven) will sigh and sadly intone: "Two heads has the dragon."

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Well, assuming you're right and he only discovers Lyanna was his mother, thinking the above might depend on his command of the timeline of Robert's Rebellion

The only assumptions I have at this point are that Jon is older than we think or than he knows and Lyanna is his mother. I have strong inclinations towards Robert as his father; but I would also consider Mance. I don't think Rhaegar has anything to do with Jon but rather Dany.

As far as being right about anything; I'm prepared to be wrong on any count. Being right doesn't really matter to me. I'm more interested in the possibilities and where they lead. So I don't have a problem re-framing and extrapolating so long as it comes from the text.

So dig in, enjoy yourself and if it comes to a fight just remember the local house rules; stick to the text, have respect for the ideas of others and above all conduct the debate with great good humour.

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As a reader, what I seek is a book that delights and surprises me. I want to not know what is gonna happen. For me, that’s the essence of storytelling and for this reason I want my readers to turn the pages with increasing fever: to know what happens next. There are a lot of expectations, mainly in the fantasy genre, which you have the hero and he is the chosen one, and he is always protected by his destiny. I didn’t want it for my books.